Aion bans 16.000 accounts

Andrew Beegle, Community Manager for Aion has posted the following announcement:

As you probably noticed, we’ve completed a server wide reboot without much notice on a day that we typically don’t perform maintenance. It’s only fair that we keep you in the loop and make sure you know what’s going on. Over the last week we’ve been working on a list, we’ve been checking it twice, and today we found out who was naughty or nice. Ban Hammer Claus just came to town. When the servers come back online, nearly 16,000 accounts will have been removed from the game. If your account was banned, please read the following FAQ.

1. Why was I banned?

There could be many reasons your account was closed. If you did not receive notification of your violation via e-mail please create a support ticket and the violation will be explained to you. Please note that if your account was closed for the use of 3rd party software (botting) or participating in RMT (gold buying/selling) the evidence for the account closure was gathered over several weeks. It may be completely unrelated to what your character was doing right when your account was closed.

Any action that modifies the client or automates the same way a bot does could potentially flag an account as a violator. We do not use one specific instance to “flag” an account for botting or RMT. We use many instances to strengthen our conclusions. Please understand that it is not what “you” have done on your account, but what the account has done. If your account is shared, purchased, borrowed, or power leveled, it could be the actions of anyone who’s ever used the account.

3. I’m aware of all of the above, but I have never done any of it. Who do I contact?

To request a review, please create a support ticket.

We are taking a very hard stance on this issue and do have sophisticated processes and procedures in place that help us keep unwarranted banning to a minimum. If you believe you’ve been wrongfully banned, you can email us atsupport@ncsoft.com, and we will review your account. Our goal is to ensure our legitimate players are having the best game experience possible. Please note that you don’t need to submit multiple tickets, as we will review a specific case only once. We obviously take these violations seriously, but also want to make sure that legitimate players aren’t banned unnecessarily.

We’d like to reiterate that we’ve been listening to your concerns. We’ve been constantly adding to our Customer Service and Game Surveillance Unit. As we continue to move forward, you’ll see more and more of these efforts. Thanks for your patience everyone, and have fun playing Aion!